Students with caring responsibilities see massive fall in university admissions

The number of carers getting places at universities has fallen dramatically since 2023. Specifically, they’ve awarded places to a third fewer – nearly 6,000 people – with care responsibilities in 2024 than the previous year, according to UCAS data.

UCAS: carer places plummet

The number of applicants universities have awarded places to has hit a record high. Notably, 2024 saw a bumper crop of 425,860 successful applicants. This was up from 414,940 in 2023. It narrowly surpassed 2022’s result of universities awarding places to 425,830 applicants – the previous record year. Overall, the UCAS data goes back to 2015.

However, the results weren’t all showing a rosy picture. Significantly, the proportion of carers that universities gave places to this year has plummeted. Specifically, universities gave nearly 6,000 fewer places to carer applicants in 2024, than in 2023.

In 2023, this was 17,690, whereas only 11,820 applicants with care responsibilities won places in 2024.

UCAS data on carer status only goes back to 2023, so it isn’t possible to compare this with previous years.

Moreover, the UCAS data doesn’t show the number of carers who applied to university. As a result, it’s not possible to make comparisons on the proportion of carer applicants who universities refused a place. On top of this, it also means it’s impossible to determine if the drop in places awarded correlates to a corresponding fall in the number of carers applying.

Nevertheless, it still showed that universities took on thousands fewer carers as students this year.

Disparities across age groups

While the number of carer applicants universities awarded places fell across all age groups, it was most pronounced in older cohorts.

The most marked collapse in universities awarding places was for carers 35 and over. Universities gave 2,870 fewer places than in 2023. It means that awards for this group collapsed by  over three-quarters.

However, the over 35s span a greater age range than the other demographic groups.

Similarly, universities awarded far less places to 25-29 and 30-34 year-old carers. They gave places to 690 (66%) and 870 (74%) less carers respectively.

Across both years, universities awarded 18-year-old carers the most places of any age demographic. Of course, this we can largely attribute to the fact that the majority attend university on completion of A-Levels at this age. Proportionally, it was the smallest fall, at around 6.5%.

However, universities still awarded 500 fewer places to this group in 2024.

UCAS: a pandemic fall-out?

All this sits within the broader context of the pandemic and so-called “economic inactivity”.

As the Canary reported, new Office for National Statistics (ONS) figures have shown a rise in people out of employment. Specifically, the data said that over 9.4 million people were “economically inactive” between April to June 2024. This is the government’s blanket label for anyone outside the capitalist job market.

Crucially though, we highlighted how the bulk of these were:

students, or vastly undervalued and often unpaid carers, plugging the gaps of the broken healthcare and welfare systems. They’re chronically ill people that both are also letting down.

It included over 1.7 million people “looking after family/home” – in other words, carers. In fact, the data showed that 60,000 more carers were economically inactive on the same period in 2023. In tandem with this the ONS data had also underscored how the rate of unemployed chronically ill people had also shot up.

Notably, the vast majority of long-term sick people reported to the ONS that they did not want a job. In particular, nearly 2.2 million of the total 2.8 million economically inactive long-term sick people said this.

However, a note of caution on this first. The ONS’s data doesn’t explore peoples’ reasons for this. This means that right-wing outlets can manipulate the data for its demonising agenda, as the Daily Mail already did. Vitally, this doesn’t take into account that many chronically ill people would actually like to work, but are unable. In other words, the question and its results are highly misleading.

The Canary is going to assume that the vast majority of those responding that they did not want a job, did so because they are too sick to take up work.

Therefore, the higher rates of economically inactive long-term sick people also likely links to the increase in carers out of work too. Essentially, the lack of state care for newly chronically ill people is forcing family members to take on care responsibilities.

Importantly, the Canary also noted a possible cause for these upward trends too. That is, the sky-rocketing rates of long Covid. In April, separate ONS data found that 2 million people across England and Scotland were living with the chronic illness.

Higher education for the rich and healthy

It seems likely that the drop in universities awarding places to carers has something to do with this. More carers looking after more chronically ill people could mean:

• Fewer carers applying for places in the first place
• Fewer carer applicants meeting university grade requirements due to new or increasing care pressures, and lack of support.

Alongside this, new carers might not be able to afford prohibitive university costs either. Notably, there’s a class element to this. People from poorer households may take up work alongside their studies to afford living costs at university. However, with care responsibilities, they may not be able to do this. Instead, many rely on woefully inadequate state support, that renders them doing many hours of unpaid labour. Therefore, the ONS’s rise in economically inactive carers and chronically ill people may account for some of these.

The data may also reflect this disparity whereby universities awarded the fewest places to the poorest applicants. In particular, they gave 68,010 places to students from the 20% most deprived areas. By contrast, it awarded 91,880 to students living in the richest 20% of places.

Unfortunately, the UCAS data only divides its measures of deprivation into quintiles, making it difficult to match up with the standard Index of Multiple Deprivation (IMD) census data, which uses the more useful decile breakdown.

The 2021 Census identified approximately 5 million unpaid carers across England and Wales. Crucially, people living in the 10% most deprived areas made up a bigger proportion of unpaid carers. On top of this, they were also more likely to be working far more hours than those from rich neighbourhoods. Of course, given that the UCAS data is in quintiles, it’s not possible to make like-for-like data comparisons with either its deprivation, or carer statistics.

Nevertheless, both the drop in carer places and the significantly lower rates of students from the poorest areas getting into university shows that its still the preserve of wealthy, healthy, and time rich. In other words, huge classism and ableism barriers persist in higher education.

Feature image via Youtube – Good Morning Britain/the Canary